Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Kentucky Writers Day and Roberts Society

American Premiere of Des Hymnagistes: An Anthology

The 2010 Kentucky Writers Day Celebration at Historic Penn's Store will feature the American Premiere of the new poetry volume Des Hymnagistes: An Anthology (Des Hymnagistes Press, 2010). The book will have its World Premiere and formal release celebration in June at Brunnenburg Castle in Italy, former home of Ezra Pound and now the residence of his daughter Mary de Rachewiltz. The Des Hymnagistes volume resonates with Pound's landmark Des Imagistes: An Anthology (1914). Inspired by Imagism, filtered through a century of literary history and transformed by influences such as hymns and country songs, Hymnagism is a worldwide movement with deep Kentucky roots--over the past decade, for example, many Hymnagistes poets have read their works at Kentucky Writers Day Celebrations. This new volume includes poems by descendants of the original Imagists (e.g. Pound's daughter Mary de Rachewiltz and Richard Aldington's daughter Catherine Aldington),Valerie Hemingway, as well as the work of the well-known Kentucky poet H. R. Stoneback and other rising young Hymnagiste poets. Along with Stoneback, several other contributors to the volume--A.B., William Boyle, Brad McDuffie, Matthew Nickel, Alex Shakespeare--will read at the 2010 Kentucky Writers Day, Sunday, April 25th at 2 PM, at Penn's Store. All of these Hymnagiste poets will be in Kentucky for their annual pilgrimage to the Elizabeth Madox Roberts Conference at St. Catharine College in Springfield (April 24-26). And they claim Roberts, Kentucky's great novelist, as an Imagiste, a proto-Hymnagiste.

The American Premiere and Hymnagiste Readings are scheduled for 2:00pm until 3:30pm, April 25 during the 2010 KENTUCKY WRITERS DAY CELEBRATIONS at Historic Penn's Store. Penn's Store is located at 257 Penn's Store Road, off KY HWY 243 3 miles SE of Gravel Switch, Kentucky.